Msu Chills Irish

Spartans' Late 68-yard Td Negates Rally

September 24, 2000|By Avani Patel, Tribune Staff Writer.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The elements have all been laid out, each game another tarot card on the table that is the 2000 season. How Notre Dame interprets the first four weeks of football, what the Fighting Irish take from it, will determine the course the rest of a simultaneously promising and maddening year will take.

On Saturday, the Irish again fell under the hex that, for the last four seasons, has been Michigan State, giving away in a few stunning seconds a game they improbably had in hand. The Spartans, trailing 21-20, were facing fourth-and-10 from their own 32-yard line. There may have been 1 minute 58 seconds left on the clock, but only the next play mattered.

On a day when the Irish had survived scares and created their own share of unlikely moments, the final piece of magic, in the form of a slant pass from freshman quarterback Jeff Smoker stretched into a 68-yard touchdown run by receiver Herb Haygood, belonged to Michigan State.

Flashed on the scoreboards on either end of Spartan Stadium, the score, Michigan State 27, Notre Dame 21, was as clear as bright lights in a darkening autumn sky. Irish eyes, however, stared and stared, haunted as if they had seen an apparition.

"It's one of those things you can't believe happened. It just happened," a stunned coach Bob Davie afterward. "We hung in there and put ourselves in position to win at the end, but we didn't, and it's something that we're going to have to live with."

As they are going to have to live with a 2-2 record that, but for a couple of plays, could be perfect.

If the offensive numbers are any guide, Notre Dame should never have been in the game, let alone in position to win it. The Irish had only eight first downs to the Spartans' 19. And while the rushing yardage was roughly comparable--149 yards for Notre Dame, 167 for Michigan State--the Irish had only 63 yards passing to the Spartans' 181.

Trailing 20-7, the Irish brought in freshman quarterback Matt LoVecchio to replace ineffective starter Gary Godsey two-thirds of the way through the third quarter. The move paid dividends on the first play of the fourth quarter when LoVecchio threw a 43-yard pass to Javin Hunter from the Michigan State 45, setting up the first of Julius Jones' two touchdowns.

"We had planned coming in that if we bogged down we'd go with Matt, and we were bogged down," Davie said.

Combined, Godsey and LoVecchio finished 5-for-16 with one interception. The more mobile LoVecchio also had 21 yards rushing.

"We struggled offensively," Davie acknowledged, and the big-play kick returns that enabled the Irish to hang with Nebraska two weeks earlier were nowhere in evidence.

"I thought they did a good job covering kicks," Davie said. "We did generate some points on defense, basically."

On the field for more than 34 minutes, the Irish defense caused a fumble, made an interception and held Michigan State tailback T.J. Duckett 34 yards below his per-game rushing average, though the burly sophomore managed 141 yards.

Going after Smoker, the Irish sacked the freshman six times, which is why blitzing on fourth-and-10 late in the game was the obvious call to make, Davie said.

"If I'm going to go down, I'm going to go down blitzing," he explained. "We've made a commitment to being more aggressive on defense. That aggressiveness put us back in the game."

The Irish led 7-0 early, but what people will remember of this game is the end. Safety Tony Driver, beaten by Haygood for the winning touchdown, knows that.

"We should have had the play," Driver said. "He took it 68 yards. We've got some speed back there. We thought we had it."

Said defensive coordinator Gret Mattison: "[This has] got to make us stronger. We've just got to come back and win the rest of our ballgames."